World Reading Project, Book #8
Croatia
Adios, Cowboy, by Olja Savičević, 2016
This book was not exactly my cup of tea because of the style. The author is also a poet and the writing has the greater need for interpretation that I associate with poetry. The first part of the book is told from the perspective of Dada, the main character, and it's a bit all over the place. I couldn't tell if certain sections were in the present or if they were flashbacks. And the dialogue was not always clear. But it was engaging enough to continue. The content of this book was also rather dark.
Dada has come home to Split to help take care of her mom and also to investigate her brother's suicide. He had gotten involved with some unsavory characters and she's sort of trying to figure out if he had become violent/bad like them. The title, Adios Cowboy, comes from the fact that a lot of westerns were shot in Croatia. Dada's brother adored westerns and at the end of the book there's a surreal scene on the set of a new movie being filmed. There's also an Iroquois family that lives in town, I'm assuming who immigrated there to work in the movies. Before I understood that it was rather confusing. Dada talks about playing "cowboys and indians" as a child and it was hard to tell if the Iroquois family was actually Iroquois or if it was part of the make believe. The reviews on the back of the book said that this was a funny book, and I don't really agree. But it was interesting.
I guess I said the writing wasn't really my cup of tea, but I did love these two quotes:
"There’s a storm out at sea and perhaps all the houses and trees in the town will be destroyed, perhaps a real catastrophe will occur, something important and elemental, that will spin me round like a forceful slap, but not even that would shake me out of my inability to turn something round in myself, to make a quite small movement, like breathing, without collapsing."
"She listens to the underground shifting beneath the surface of the soil- down there nothing has changed. Under the earth there is abundant life and death: tubers and bulbs turn into humus and a mole scratches its crisp crust, ants grind grains of red soil into friable granules, and in the deeper layers fat white worms munch the hearts of the dead, an underground stream bursts its way through the clay; in the dense saturated darkness silver and gold veins explode, minerals crackle, mandrake roots scream, while dead occupiers rearrange their bones. Everything that falls onto the earth becomes nourishment, which someone on the underside of the pavement reheats, melts, and sucks up through little straws. If you don’t believe this, ask yourself where all those fruits and large or small animal corpses, which no one collects or buries, disappear. And if you still don’t believe it- leave a dead dog in a field and in sixty days you will find only a dry tail. That’s why Maria listens and never lies on the earth for long."
I guess I said the writing wasn't really my cup of tea, but I did love these two quotes:
"There’s a storm out at sea and perhaps all the houses and trees in the town will be destroyed, perhaps a real catastrophe will occur, something important and elemental, that will spin me round like a forceful slap, but not even that would shake me out of my inability to turn something round in myself, to make a quite small movement, like breathing, without collapsing."
"She listens to the underground shifting beneath the surface of the soil- down there nothing has changed. Under the earth there is abundant life and death: tubers and bulbs turn into humus and a mole scratches its crisp crust, ants grind grains of red soil into friable granules, and in the deeper layers fat white worms munch the hearts of the dead, an underground stream bursts its way through the clay; in the dense saturated darkness silver and gold veins explode, minerals crackle, mandrake roots scream, while dead occupiers rearrange their bones. Everything that falls onto the earth becomes nourishment, which someone on the underside of the pavement reheats, melts, and sucks up through little straws. If you don’t believe this, ask yourself where all those fruits and large or small animal corpses, which no one collects or buries, disappear. And if you still don’t believe it- leave a dead dog in a field and in sixty days you will find only a dry tail. That’s why Maria listens and never lies on the earth for long."
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